Newly Uncovered Dinosaur Had Longest Horns Of All

A group of US paleontologists said Friday it has unearthed a new species of dinosaurs standing some six feet tall and weighing up to 4.5 tonnes, with the longest horns of all.The 72-million-year-old herbivore, now named Coahuilaceratops magnacuerna, has two large horns above its eyes measuring up to an impressive four feet (1.22 meters) long — the largest of any other species, providing fresh insight into the history of western North America.

Scientists uncovered fossils belonging to both an adult and a juvenile of the rhino-sized tubby creature at the Cerro del Pueblo Formation in Coahuila, Mexico. It measured about 22 feet (6.7 meters) long as an adult, standing six to seven feet (1.8 to two meters) tall at the shoulder and hips.”We know very little about the dinosaurs of Mexico, and this find increases immeasurably our knowledge of the dinosaurs living in Mexico during the Late Cretaceous,” said the study’s lead author Mark Loewen, a paleontologist with the Utah Museum of Natural History.

His team is to release a book next week detailing the find, which took place during expeditions in 2002 and 2003 in the Coahuila desert. The study was funded by the National Geographic Society and the University of Utah.When dinosaurs lived in this corner of Mexico, it was a lush, humid estuary where ocean water mixed with fresh water from rivers, similar to the US Gulf Coast today.

Rare 'Alligator Snapping Turtle' Caught In Chinese Lake

A fisherman in China was surprised after catching this striking creature, which looks like a cross between a turtle and a dinosaur. The man discovered the alligator snapping turtle, which is not native to the country, in Weishan Lake, in southern China’s Anhui province.

The species is only native to North America and was probably someone’s pet before being dumped in the lake, the local fishing department said. The creature’s alien status meant that it could have posed a danger to the local ecological system, they added.
Fisherman Sun Yongcheng said he was surprised when he netted the alligator turtle, which measures 76cm long and 30cm wide and weighs 7kg.

New Species Of Dinosaur Found In Eastern Utah Rock

Fossils of a previously undiscovered species of dinosaur have been found in slabs of Utah sandstone that were so hard that explosives had to be used to free some of the remains, scientists said Tuesday. The bones found at Dinosaur National Monument belonged to a type of sauropod — long-necked plant-eaters that were said to be the largest animal ever to roam land.

The discovery included two complete skulls from other types of sauropods — an extremely rare find, scientists said.The fossils offer fresh insight into lives of dinosaurs some 105 million years ago, including the evolution of sauropod teeth, which reveal eating habits and other information, said Dan Chure, a paleontologist at the monument that straddles the Utah-Colorado border.

“You can hardly overstate the significance of these fossils,” he said.Of the 120 or so known species of sauropods, complete skulls have been found for just eight. That’s mostly because their skulls were made of thin, fragile bones bound by soft tissue that were easily destroyed after death.

Bird-Like Dinosaur With Four Wings Found In China

Chinese researchers have unearthed the fossil of a bird-like dinosaur with four wings in northeastern China, which they suggest is a missing link in dinosaurs’ evolution into birds. In a paper in the journal Nature, they said they found the well-preserved fossil of the “Anchiornis huxleyi,” which roamed the earth some 160 million years ago, in a geological formation in China’s northeastern Liaoning province.

About the size of a chicken, the fossil has a total body length of less than 50cm (20 inches) and a skull about 6cm long, lead researcher Xing Xu at the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing told Reuters in an email.

“This finding suggests that birds are likely to be descended from a kind of small-sized four-winged dinosaur about 160 million years ago,” Xu said.“It is a link between more typical theropods (dinosaurs which moved around with two rear limbs) and birds. It lived around a time period … that we expected for birds’ ancestor.”

In a statement, the researchers said: “Long feathers cover the arms and tail, but also the feet, suggesting that a four-winged stage may have existed in the transition to birds.”